The Boston Transportation Department is expanding the City’s successful Scooter and Motorcycle Parking Program to several streets in Boston’s Financial District. A total of fifteen parking slots will soon be established to provide those who drive scooters and motorcycles into the area with metered on-street parking spaces. The slots will be patterned after the 39 parking slots installed on Newbury and Boylston Streets in the Back Bay in 2010.

The parking slots will be located as follows.

Four spaces on Batterymarch Street, between Franklin Street and Wendell Street

Four spaces on Milk Street at India Street

Four spaces on High Street at Oliver Street

Three spaces on Pearl Street, between Purchase Street and High Street

Boston Transportation Commissioner Thomas J. Tinlin said, “Boston’s Scooter and Motorcycle Parking Program was initiated in the Back Bay two years ago in cooperation with residents and commuters who drive these vehicles. The Back Bay parking slots are popular, there is demand to create more of them, and the Financial District is another busy area of the City where we expect that parking slots will be utilized regularly.”

The initiative is a component of the Complete Streets approach to transportation planning and design that Boston has adopted in recent years to ensure that local streets are both environmentally friendly and accommodating to all users.

Three metered parking spaces, as well as an area of unregulated curb space, are being removed to accommodate the new parking slots in the Financial District. Parking spaces are generally twenty-feet in length, but since a parking slot only takes up five feet, four scooters or motorcycles can park in the same amount of space as only one four wheel vehicle.

The parking meter rate at the parking slots is .25 per hour vs. $1.25 per hour at standard metered parking spaces in Boston. A second variation is that there is no time limit at the metered parking slots, as opposed to the two hour limit in effect at most metered parking spaces in the City.

With the expansion of this parking program, the City is recognizing the benefits of driving scooters and motorcycles in an urban setting. The vehicles are smaller and many are environmentally friendly, contributing less to congestion and air pollution, and requiring less space for curbside parking. As a result, they may be a good transportation alternative for Boston.

Those with questions or comments regarding this initiative are encouraged to contact the Boston Transportation Department at BTD@cityofboston.gov.